Scott Huddleston: Fort Hood victims recalled in testimony

FORT HOOD — Testimony resumed today in the pretrial hearing in last year’s shooting massacre with recollections of the 13 fallen victims, including a pregnant soldier who cried “my baby, my baby.”

Spc. Jonathan Sims, testifying on live video from Afghanistan, said he was sitting next to a young female soldier at the Soldier Readiness Processing Center who had been sent home because she was expecting a baby.

”She just told me that she got pregnant in Iraq, downrange, and she was there for reverse SRP,” Sims said.

Suddenly, a man shouted “Allahu Akbar” and started shooting, he said. Sims was hit in the chest and twice in the back.

Sims said he pulled something, possibly a table, over him and another soldier for protection. At one point, he believed the gunman jumped onto the table, as he felt a “pressure” weighing down from above.

When he looked back at the female soldier, she “was sitting next to me in a fetal position, yelling ‘My baby, my baby,’ ” he recalled.

After he heard someone say “he’s gone,” Sims threw off the table and saw the blood all around him. He looked back at the woman again, and saw that she was unresponsive.

“She was face-down at this time, not moving,” Sims said.

Although Sims didn’t mention her name, the woman is presumed to have been Pfc. Francheska Velez, who had been in Iraq for nine months and was three months pregnant.

Sgt. Christopher Burgess, who testified from Iraq, said he was with Staff Sgt. Justin M. DeCrow when the shooting occurred.

When asked by a military prosecutor why DeCrow hadn’t deployed with him, Burgess paused for a few seconds, cleared his throat, then replied.

“He was one of the 13 who were killed in that room, sir,” Burgess said.

The defendant, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, looked much as he did last week, generally emotionless and unaffected by the testimony as he sat in his wheelchair, wearing an Army uniform and an olive drab watch cap. At one point, Hasan, paralyzed from the chest down, used his arms to lift himself in his wheelchair to reposition his body.

Hasan often stroked his chin with his right hand, and occasionally bowed his head during Monday’s testimony. The purpose of the hearing is to determine which charges against him warrant a trial. Hasan is charged with 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted premeditated murder.